Two days, a looming sinus infection, some frozen fingers and toes later: election day has come and gone.
It’s a wrap.
As a child, I never understood why religion and politics were off limits as conversation topics. As an adult I see why. With both, most people are so ill informed that they consider making up their lack of facts with noise and violence. As I told quite a few folks on Tuesday, your loudness does not make up for your ignorance.
The Good:
No more Robo-Calls from Ed Rendell, Tom Corbett, and whoever else I hung up on. My postal worker will only have to heave dozens of college material instead of Jewish Democrats for Romney, or Republican Lesbian for Obama.
I can watch regular TV again. I won’t be bombarded with commercial after commercial about who lies the most.
No more Twitter, Facebook, or email spam.
I talked to more people who plan to become a greater part of the process, rather than coat tail at the end of the run.
Obeezy!
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| My name is O |
The Bad:
My ‘political’ friends are in one of two camps: sore losers or sore winners. Mittens said it best:
The nation, as you know, is at a critical point. At a time like this we can’t risk partisan bickering and political posturing. Our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people’s work, and we citizens also have to rise to occasion.
We have to get past the labels of being an R or a D and work for the greater good of our community. I met an attorney from New York and he broke it down like this:
Blacks are screwed. The Republicans feel like ‘you WON’T vote for us, so we don’t have to do anything for you.’ The Democrats feel like ‘you WILL vote for us, so we don’t have to do anything for you.’ We lose either way!
My litigious friend was correct. As long as we as a people allow ourselves to fall under a grouping of them versus us, we will continue to be screwed.
The Ugly:
Websites popping up that continues to play to race baiting:
White People Mourning Romney depicts saddened whites after the loss.
anti-Obama is just as the name suggest, anti-obama.
Now that Election Day has passed, this doesn’t mean that we can sit back. No. Now is the time to roll our sleeves up and really get to work. The same folks who hollered about the Township should have been with me last night at the council meeting. Instead, there were a whooping EIGHT folks (three of us being Township employees) listening to discussions about the upcoming budget. Folks, we gots to do much, much better.
For the past six months, we’ve been divided. We’ve duked it out over which candidate was the better candidate, and the country is the only loser. We now have to demand that those people who asked for our vote actually do the work they promised.
With Democrats celebrating the results and Republicans (hopefully) planning a different strategy, Ornstein summed it best:
It’s not that higher turnout is, in and of itself, a goal, or creates a healthy society. The former Soviet Union had regularly 98 percent turnout. What they’ll tell you in Australia is that if you know that your base is going to turn out and their base is going to turn out, that you don’t have politics driven by I’m going to scare the crap out of my base to get them out there or suppress the other sides. You focus on the voters in the middle, and it changes the issues you talk about and the way you talk about them.
My Take Away:
America made the right choice. Now we need to make sure President Obama follows through on the things he said he would do. If not, he makes a mockery of the process.
Democrats have to do more than posturing and yelling. They have to DO the things we elected them into office to do. On the flip side, Republicans have to distance themselves from the Bill O’Reilly’s, Ann Coulters, and others who continue to divide over race and class.
As a people, we need to flex our muscle and DEMAND that our leaders serve US and not the will of the party. We need to become the United States once again.
Keep the conversation going. Comments welcomed!